Best of My Youtube Videos

If you've been following YouTube at all lately, you're probably aware that the organization is undergoing something of a content purge, shutting down accounts left and right due to copyright infringement issues. My own account has been hit hard by "registered to a third party" complaints for the music in my, er, music videos; whenever I receive one of these complaints, I delete the offending video (this happens roughly a third of the time now, incidentally). I do this because, if the owner (or anyone, apparently) actually files a grievance, my account will be terminated, and all of my videos will be deleted en masse.

The point of this post is to mark a likely end to (my uploading to) that account (because I'm tired of dealing with the above), look back at what videos are still available on YouTube, and highlight a few of these along the way. When I first started posting, I was strictly mixing the music with still images because that's all I knew how to do. Later, I learned how to edit actual clips together. From beginning to end, I've also posted what you might call 'album cover videos' since they (usually) restrict themselves to a still picture of the cover; these are also sometimes called "audio only".

Posted about back in April 2011, "Uschi" (by No No Zero) was my first video, and remains the one with the highest view count.



Age restriction effectively slowed viewership of that one to a crawl, but hey, it's still there at least. Incidentally, my second highest view count belongs to Skullflower's "Diamond Bullet" (also an early album cover-type stills video), also still with us. The video with the least amount of views remains "Gush" by the late, great Aube. And this one has been around for a while too, so -- make of that what you will.

Figuring out how to edit video clips together was a revelation and inspired all kinds of different attempts at mixing sound and moving images. What follows is a line-up of some of my faves:

Namanax "Aquanax"


Bodychoke "The Red Sea"


 Shit & Shine "Practising To Be A Doctor"


No No Zero "(Let's Get Some) Vienna Action!"


The Starkweather Fix "My Body Is An Eyesore"


Rake "Remote Sensing"


Azonic "River Blindness"


Ramleh "Utopia Dust"


Pierre Henry "Après La Mort 2"


Merzbow "Black Brain Of Piranese"


James Plotkin "Plunge"


Brainbombs "No More"


B.A.L.L. "R.I.P."


Fushitsusha "The Halation Born Between You And I Who Were Doomed To Appear In Form"


Shar Pei "Xa (I-III)"


Body Rot "Creep Beat"


Terminal Cheesecake "Satan Is Real"


Mick Harris "Astray"


Holy Mount "Garm Of Hounds"


Sleazy Meanz "Sid The Sexist"


Cylon "Seeker"


The Exploding Tits "Rosalba Exposed"


MB "Zebra"


William Burchette "Invoke The Name Of God"

The Videos Youtube Wouldn't Show!

For some time now, I've been making little video montages (using iMovie) and uploading them to Youtube. Unfortunately, all too often the songs I choose are "registered with a third party", and the video is therefore disqualified from showing on my account.

To counter this, I briefly started a secret, second account, but I lost some information and now I can't even sign in.

So here, by way of backdoor trickery, are some videos Youtube would have no truck with.

Earth - Dissolution
Suicide - Radiation
Nimrod - Control
Human Eye - Rare Little Creature
Holy Cobras - He's Rubber, I'm Real
Luie Luie - Lord, What A Wonderful World
Skullflower - Lords of Increase
Shallow North Dakota - Replace The Herzog
OLD - Vein Water
Lamps - Hawaiian Voters
Electric Wizard - Satanic Rites of Drugula
Codeine - Two Faced Man
Cheater Slicks - Hypnosis
Brainbombs - Drive Around

New!!!

Doldrums - On The Green

Sleazy Meanz Got A Bandcamp (and Pius Got A Youtube Channel Too!)

If you visit this site at all regularly, you may have wondered what I've been up to lately. The short answer is: hibernating at home, making music, aaaaaaaa-nd uploading noisey video stuff to Youtube.

As far as music is concerned, I've created a bandcamp page for my solo samples-based project Sleazy Meanz. Right now, I have the first few records up, but that takes us only as far as 2008 so you know there's a lot more to come (provided I keep uploading them, of course).

I recorded this stuff initially just because I wanted to hear these sounds. Often-times, I'd hear a riff in an old song and think, "I wish I could hear that for two or three (or ten) more minutes". So, once I'd figured out Garageband, I would loop the riff, and then maybe add some more sounds (or occasional vocals) on top.

Copyright would obviously keep the majority of it from ever getting a legit release, and until now, the number of folks who have heard this can be counted on one hand. In other words, I never intended to make any of it publically available (until Troubledoor released Pornography God Man in 2011).

But, what the hey. It's nice for me to finally be organizing all these tracks and figuring out what order things were recorded, and so on. Inspired by Rick White's recent archiving of his music on Bandcamp, I've made four albums (Ooze It Up!, Scratch Paw, Greenery, and Evergreenz) available for free download there as well, and I think that's... morally sound?

Let's hope it's legally sound.

****

As far as videos, I've been slowly familiarizing myself with iMovie and what it can do, and I've moved from still photo montage to editing moving pictures. I edited 8mm on a splicer/editor back in university, and it's a lot of fun to be back playing around with thesis and antithesis and making people move around backwards and all that great stuff. Special thanks due to theavgeeks, whose vintage Youtube uploads have proved invaluable.

I hope to feature a few of the better ones here in the near future, or if you like, you can visit my channel at Youtube.

Please feel free to subscribe for the video ride!

Loads of Youtube Uploads!

I've been busy lately uploading music to Youtube, sometimes with just a cover scan, sometimes a scan of the booklet art, sometimes actual editing of gathered visuals. Some you may recognize as things I've posted here on the blog, others are 'all new'.

In the last month or so alone:

Kittens - Butterfly
Sensational - Excellence Makes Wack Irrelevant
Gilbert/Hampson/Kendall - Quad
David Shea and Robert Hampson - Untitled 2
Space City USA - Nice Time
Pecola - Worker And Parasite
Walking Timebombs - Fade
Pica - Uncoordinated Universal Time
Main - Occlusion
Shar Pei - If There Be Thorns
Kanal - Supplicant And The Turnkey (Ocosi Mix)
The Starkweather Fix - Mai Lin
Blind Alley - Until The Light Returns
Consumer Electronics and Merzbow - Horn of the Goat
Skullflower - Hamburger Lady
The Starkweather Fix - Majestic Burning Bush
Mason Jones and Jojo Hiroshige - Live Osaka '97
Cosmic Psychos - Hard
God - Suck Like A Leech
James Plotkin - Intruder?
Superconductor - Ride The Big Penis
Bomb - B/E/A/F/A/G
Cheater Slicks - Hypnosis
Loop - Pulse (Live)
Loop - From Centre To Wave (Live)
Loop - Black Sun (Live)
Blind Alley - Sister Smile
Skullflower - The Pirate Ship Of Reality Moves Out (Live)
Merzbow - Elephants Memory
K.K. Null - Kundalini Dance

You can listen to everything I've put up in reverse order, and hey, why not subscribe to my feed while you're at it?

Sleazy Meanz - Elias Hell

The recent death of Ronnie Montrose had me contemplating some kind of loopy evisceration of Montrose's Rock Candy. Long story short, that didn't happen - but this did: a similarly bloody grafting of Elias Hulk's 1970 classic Nightmare with the soundtrack of Ron Ormond's 1974 Christian scare film The Burning Hell*.



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For visuals, I used anything Hell or hellish - whether that be ancient Japanese Hell scrolls or already-crappy modern CGI. I put it all together over March, and then let it sit a week or so before I decided to unleash it here -- on Passover Weekend (!).

I hope you enjoy.

*let the record show that Vomit Squad** used footage from the film before this in their brilliant video for "Burning with Beelzebub".
**the last band No No Zero did a show with, back in December of 2011. And fun times were had.

Evidence of Rocking!

We've played a couple of shows in the last few weeks and since then some live video has been posted online. First of all, Mr. Halpenny's footage of No No Zero playing "Amputate" at Ghost Hole III appeared on Vimeo; I was later able to put the entire four song block he'd shot up on Youtube. The photo above is from the same show and was also supplied by Mr. Halpenny. Here's another one he took the same night of The (sexy and splendifferous) Soupcans --


Big thanks to Xenia for having us out to play this very fun show - on what was almost certainly the coolest stage I've ever played on. You can't tell from the video exactly, but there was a massive metal dragon head sculpture above us and it actually breathed smoke while the bands were playing (during our set, I was able to control the smoke with a foot pedal). So cool! I enclose pictures of the awesome artwork at Ghost Hole III, taken from X Blog and The White House Studio Project --







Oddly enough, the same night we played Ghost Hole III, GaragePunkToronto posted video of us playing "Closet Case" at our Silver Dollar show last May. Thank you, GaragePunkToronto!


Our most recent show was last weekend at the Press Club. The night was a blast - but of course it was dark so I have no real photos of the evening unfortunately (other than the sign out front and one of Jordan behind the drums). Thanks to Planet Creature and Bruised Knees for super sets!


Next up, we are *finally* going to make up for our missed show in Montreal some years ago, December 10th at Casa del Popolo! Details on that to follow soon.

What A Night!

Thanks to everyone who out to the Silver Dollar last night for what proved IMHO to be a very good show indeed. Punters trickled in slowly but there was a healthy crowd by the time super fresh trio Prosimii began their most excellent aural assault. I was really impressed and look forward to seeing them again soon, hopefully on a bill with us. The 50 free copies of their EP vanished in no time, and it is now available online here.

Nick Flanagan took the stage next (following perhaps the world's worst introduction, courtesy of moi) and people started heckling -- which is kind of strange since I'd just read a thread last week all about heckling (tons of excellent related video links) -- so I decided to get some fresh air in lieu of letting a growing tsunami of anxiety wash over me.


When I came back in, Pow Wows had started playing what turned out to be a pretty thorough set; I was pleased to hear they can pull their sound off live, and they do the whole three-part harmony thing with aplomb. They told me they haven't been at it very long, but they certainly play like seasoned pros, and I was very wowed indeed.

This time I stuck around for Nick's comedy and enjoyed it as I always do; special thanks to him for coming out and doing the show. I've known Nick a long time now and he's a great guy, a real class act, and of course very funny too. Get his new record "I'm Here All Weak" if you haven't already...



By the time we got on, it was pretty late and most folks had left for whatever came next. The flipside of that is that those remaining were hardcore freaks and drunks. Even though I'm now well into my Fat Elvis period, I was giving it 110%*, and the band played beautifully, and fun was definitely had.

This was an especially special show for No No Zero because it was our first one with the very sweet styles of 'Sweets' Sweetland (now on baritone guitar) in a few years, and our last one with Gideon Steinberg of the spectacular Soupcans. Don't expect to see us out for a bit as we mix our forthcoming record, and hopefully work on some new songs.

Thanks to all the bands, Nick Flanagan, Dan Burke, my wife for working the door, and Ireek Sofakia for uploading some footage from the show!





Bonus: Live video by Ireek of new song "Bite Me"

*even after falling backwards off the stage and onto a riser, as seen halfway though the first video at the top of the post. And yes, I am feeling that today, thanks...

Uschi: The Youtube Video!

On a whim last night, I finally decided to try my hand at actually uploading a video to Youtube (I know, I'm rather late to the whole business). After a trial run uploading White Flame's "Lewd Dude" with just a simple pic of the LP cover (a song which was, rather shockingly, missing heretofore from Youtube's collection), I was ready to try something a little more advanced.

It had long been a dream of mine to create a simple 'video' for No No Zero's song "Uschi" (off Rough Stuff) with either film footage or still photographs of the lady herself; just a simple visual compliment to the song, something to connect someone hearing it with a person they may not be familiar with (or alternately all too familiar with).


With such a project in mind, I tried to use iMovie for the first time and crashed the computer (quite a feat really). A second attempt involved not only trying to learn the application, but searching desperately for enough PG-rated pictures of Uschi (video was too difficult by half) to make up the three and a half minutes running time of the song.

After what seems like nine hours or so, I think it's finally ready to come into the world. Ladies & gentlemen, let me present the fruits of my labours: a video for No No Zero's tribute-in-song "Uschi"!

No No Zero interview on AUX TV!

Well, the interview I did last September with Sam Sutherland for AUX's online show "Exclaim TV Presents Garageland" is now up. See me talk some nonsense behind the Silver Dollar, in addition to some nice footage of the band playing a couple of songs there too ("Eurosleaze" and "Colossal Penetrations" for the record).

Get hooked and come see us tomorrow night!

Thanks to Sam Sutherland, Ashley Carter, and Justin Taylor.

Marilyn at Santa Monica Beach 1962!

Thanks go out to Anonymous, who tipped us off that the photos of Marilyn Monroe I asked about earlier were taken by George Barris in July of '62 at Santa Monica Beach. They are in fact some of the last photographs taken of Marilyn before she died (Barris and Monroe were working on a piece for Cosmopolitan but were also said to be discussing a book project together).



Youtube has a great clip of the shoot at Santa Monica up - about the 2:12 mark, we get some tantalizing footage of Marilyn playing with seaweed again.